Cuba’s mangroves under threat
Many people in this hamlet on the southern coast of Cuba remember when the shore lay about 100 metres further out. That was four decades ago.
Since then, rising waters have gradually swallowed up rustic homes, a narrow highway that once paralleled the coast, even an old military tank that people now use to measure the sea’s yearly advance.
“There was a road there,” said Jose Manuel Herrera, 42, a fisherman and former charcoal harvester, pointing toward the gentle waves. “You could travel from here all the way to Mayabeque.”
Worried by forecasts of rising seas from climate change, the effects of hurricanes and the salinization of farmlands, authorities say they are beginning a forced march to repair Cuba’s first line of defence against the advancing waters – its mangrove thickets, which have been damaged by decades of neglect and uncontrolled logging.
In the second half of 2013, a moratorium was declared on mangrove logging. Now, the final touches are being put on a sustainable management master plan that is expected to be in place before the end of the year. Cuban President Raul Castro has said the plan is a top priority.
What makes the effort vital and closely monitored by environmentalists is that Cuba is one of the few places left in the Caribbean with extensive mangrove forests. Cuba accounts for about 69 per cent of the region’s current mangroves, the New York-based Environmental Defense Fund says.
Mangroves act as both a barrier to the sea and a saltwater filter, making them important for coastal health.
Even in Cuba, experts say the situation is critical.
“The situation is bad.
More than 30 per cent of the mangroves are in a critical state,” government forest scientist Reynier Samon said on a recent tour of Surgidero de Batabano, an area where deforestation has been extreme. The rest, he said, are in a state of medium deterioration. Mangroves historically have been harvested heavily, for textile dyes, tannins used in the pharmaceutical industry, lumber for furniture and charcoal that rural Cubans rely on to fire their kitchens.
But healthy mangrove stands are important to alleviating one of the island’s biggest headaches: Rising seas stand to wipe 122 towns off the map and penetrate up to two kilometres inland in low-lying areas by 2100, posing a serious threat to coastal communities and agriculture, according to a government study last year.
Efrain Arrazcaeta, who runs a local environmental non-profit, has witnessed the phenomenon with growing alarm. His group estimates a two-metre maritime advance each year, using the submerged tank as a reference point. “If the mangroves are restored, the mitigation of these effects will be notable,” Arrazcaeta said.
No details of the mangrove plan have been made public. It will apparently include sustainable exploitation measures with some logging for the pharmaceutical industry under study, though the moratorium will remain more or less in place.
Officials are also waging a public awareness campaign to educate coastal residents to be caretakers of the tangled, mosquitoinfested thickets. The campaign shows them how their homes and farms are at stake and urges them to protect freshwater streams vital for maintaining proper saline levels.
“The perception of the importance of this ecosystem for these communities is low. They see it as something to exploit,” said Samon.
